IBM System/32 available

[Guy Sotomayor]

On 11/5/15 6:39 PM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
> Incidentally, I have an IBM System/23 for which I have not yet procured any software. In particular, I could use whatever utility software that's necessary to format data disks. I haven't found any online sources of disk images for this system yet.
>
>
> http://www.nf6x.net/2014/08/ibm-system23-datamaster/
> http://www.nf6x.net/2014/09/ibm-5322-system23-datamaster-internals/

Cool!  I haven't seen those internals for a long time.  System/23 was 
the first product I worked on at IBM (wrote about 20% of the total ROM 
code for it).

If anyone knows where one is for a "reasonable" amount, I'd be 
interested mainly for nostalgia reasons.  ;-)

Some interesting facts:

  * The IBM 5120 (follow on to the 5110) used the same "skins" as the
    System/23.  That was because (for a number of reasons) System/23 was
    late and IBM wanted something in the market and the 5110 was getting
    a bit long in the tooth.  So when IBM decided to repackage the 5110
    they used the already existing skins for the System/23.
  * The expansion bus in the IBM PC was the same bus as the System/23. 
    The connector was rotated 180* so that some of the less expensive
    cards from the PC couldn't be used in the System/23.  The other
    reason for this was since the IBM PC was done on a "shoe string"
    budget, they could take the System/23 cards and only had to do some
    minimal re-layout of the board.

TTFN - Guy